Recipe: Spicy Cashew, Ginger + Basil Pesto

Makes 3 or 4 small jars

Ingredients:

20g basil leaves

30g ginger finely grated

100g cashew nuts

30ml lemon juice

1.5 roasted red pepper

1 large roasted red chilli

60ml olive oil

pinch salt

Roast the chilli + red peppers. Now, these take a while, but it’s totally worth it. So just add some prep time to this recipe and you can pretty much leave them in the oven and set a timer until they’re done. I made this recipe at the same time as the roasted red pepper soup, as the recipes go together too, so it was worth putting more peppers into the oven.

Put the chilli + peppers in a roasting tray and cover with foil, leave for approx 1.5 - 2 hours on 200deg or until the skins have loosened up and you can peel them off (chilli skin removed also). Remove from the oven and let them loose some heat before peeling, they will be very hot! Remove seeds.

Once ready, in a food processor, whizz up the basil, ginger, peppers, chilli, pepper, lemon juice, olive oil + salt. Get the mixture to a fairly fine consistency then add the cashew nuts at the end, blending until fairly smooth and most cashew particles have integrated.

Taste and re-season if needed. I would recommend not going overboard on the seasoning as you’ll most likely want to season your final dish when it’s complete.

Et voila! Pesto! Use it on pasta, soup (see roasted squash + red pepper soup recipe) or you could even throw some in a veggie burger mix :)